Selected as a Book of the Year for The Times and Sunday Times, The Telegraph, Good Housekeeping, The Critic and Red Magazine
To Nicole and Jamie Maguire, their parents seem the ideal couple - a suburban double act, happily married for more than thirty years.
So when Linda and Gerry announce that they've decided to separate, the news sends shockwaves through the siblings' lives, forcing them to confront their own expectations and desires.
Following each member of the Maguire family over a tumultuous year of lunches, dinners and drinks, At the Table is a gripping yet tender novel about what it means to grow up – both as an individual, and as a family.
Buy AT THE TABLE:
‘A smart, readable and sharply contemporary debut, full of awkward family lunches and drunken weddings, darting between Camberwell flats, Soho bars and late-night Ubers’ ― The Times and Sunday Times Best Books of 2022
‘What sets At the Table apart is Powell's acute understanding not just of how we interact in the modern world...but the eternals of the human comedy: how people fool themselves, make excuses, get it wrong and keep trying anyway’ – John Self, The Times
‘Powell is a fantastic writer who exercises perfect control. Every detail is forensically, sympathetically observed, and while there's a lot that's tragic, it's often very close to comedy’ – Wendy Holden, Daily Mail
‘The story's centre is Nicole - a spiky and charismatic woman struggling to get her life in order . . . Like Waller-Bridge's Fleabag and Rooney's Marianne, Nicole is her own woman: a complex and satisfying presence. At the Table is rich with delights’ – Erica Wagner, Harper's Bazaar
‘Filled with razor-sharp dialogue and psychological acuity, At the Table is an astute debut novel about dysfunctional family life’ – Hannah Beckerman, The Observer
‘I have rarely seen the relationship between parents and their grown-up children so deftly exposed. I sat, at the end of it, startled, close to tears. It made me want to call my mother immediately’ – Sophie Heawood, author of The Hungover Games
‘Claire Powell's great skill is to reveal to the reader what her characters struggle to realize themselves . . . Its themes are unremarkable - love, self-knowledge, the feeling everyone else is living while you are standing still . . . yet almost everything in it feels true’ – Claire Allfree, Metro
‘At the Table is an assured, exquisitely drawn novel that fans of Sorrow And Bliss will adore’ – Sarra Manning, Red Magazine
‘Well-written, witty family drama’ ― Good Housekeeping
‘Claire Powell is an incredible new talent’ – Marian Keyes
‘Painfully funny, acutely well-observed, powerfully resonant in its humanity and emotional accuracy. I missed this book whenever I wasn't reading it’ – Luke Kennard, author of Black Bag
‘I adored the precision with which these people are seen, and the exactness of the social setting. It's a novel Elizabeth Taylor wouldn't wouldn't have minded writing, and there aren't enough of those around’ – Philip Hensher
‘Brilliantly clever and funny and sad’ – India Knight
‘At the Table is an assured, exquisitely drawn read that has word-of-mouth bestseller written all over it’ ― Red Magazine
‘An exquisitely observed story of modern family dynamics’ ― British Vogue